September 2002 Insights Issue
#43
Getting rights right
Is access to justice as important as access to health or education?
A core government function is to provide an effective system of justice
for its citizens. Yet many governments fail to deliver on the basic services
of protecting physical safety, securing personal property and settling
disputes quickly and fairly. Recent studies have highlighted the fact
that for poor people, access to justice may be as important as access
to healthcare or education. How can justice be made more accessible?
More...
Other articles in this issue:
How can the poor use the law to their benefit? Should development agencies
integrate legal services and grassroots development? What impact might
this have on governance, poverty and human rights?
How can people subjected to gender violence secure justice when the violence
and abuse they suffer may not even be recognised as a crime? What obstacles
do abused women and children in Pakistan face and how can they best be
supported in seeking justice
What is environmental justice? How can it tackle human vulnerability
to environmental degradation? When is environmental justice accessible
to the most vulnerable? What role does it play in environmental management?
Traditionally, Latin American judiciaries were notable for their inaccessibility
to a majority of citizens. The poor and those suffering discrimination
for reasons of ethnicity, gender and the like were most affected. What
reform has been initiated and what can be done to enhance the main strategic
approaches for increasing access to justice?
What does the delivery of legal aid to the poor depend on and what determines
its nature and extent? What determines whether a country has a sufficient
supply of legal aid lawyers to serve the poor? How does the nature of
the national legal aid structure influence the delivery of legal aid?
Legal aid in Africa exists in name only in most countries. Prisons across
the continent are congested with high remand populations. The few with
the means to retain a lawyer may get bail or a prompt trial, but most
suffer unseen and unnoticed by a system that is itself under-resourced
and over-stretched. The situation in Malawi is no different.
Traditional justice institutions range from largely invisible intra-family
negotiations to quasi-state bodies that apply customary norms to resolve
disputes and allocate resources. What are their strengths and weaknesses
and what reforms could improve access to justice?
People in developing countries are increasingly affected by the activities
of multinational companies, yet it is difficult for them to hold those
companies to account in court. What lessons can be learnt from two recent
foreign direct liability cases brought against northern multinationals?
Further web resources.
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